Curiosities of Literature, by Isaac Disraeli

Popes.

Valois observes that the Popes scrupulously followed, in the early ages of the church, the custom of
placing their names after that of the person whom they addressed in their letters. This mark of their humility he
proves by letters written by various Popes. Thus, when the great projects of politics were yet unknown to them, did
they adhere to Christian meekness. At length the day arrived when one of the Popes, whose name does not occur to me,
said that “it was safer to quarrel with a prince than with a friar.” Henry VI. being at the feet of Pope Celestine, his
holiness thought proper to kick the crown off his head; which ludicrous and disgraceful action Baronius has highly
praised. Jortin observes on this great cardinal, and advocate of the Roman see, that he breathes nothing but fire and
brimstone; and accounts kings and emperors to be mere catchpolls and constables, bound to execute with implicit faith
all the commands of insolent ecclesiastics. Bellarmin was made a cardinal for his efforts and devotion to the papal
cause, and maintaining this monstrous paradox — that if the pope forbid the exercise of virtue, and command that of
vice, the Roman church, under pain of a sin, was obliged to abandon virtue for vice, if it would not sin against
conscience!

It was Nicholas I., a bold and enterprising Pope, who, in 858, forgetting the pious modesty of his predecessors,
took advantage of the divisions in the royal families of France, and did not hesitate to place his name before that of
the kings and emperors of the house of France, to whom he wrote. Since that time he has been imitated by all his
successors, and this encroachment on the honours of monarchy has passed into a custom from having been tolerated in its
commencement.

Concerning the acknowledged infallibility of the Popes, it appears that Gregory VII., in council, decreed
that the church of Rome neither had erred, and never should err. It was thus this prerogative of his
holiness became received, till 1313, when John XXII. abrogated decrees made by three popes his predecessors, and
declared that what was done amiss by one pope or council might be corrected by another; and Gregory
XI., 1370, in his will deprecates, si quid in catholicâ fide erasset. The university of Vienna protested
against it, calling it a contempt of God, and an idolatry, if any one in matters of faith should appeal from a
council to the Pope; that is, from God who presides in councils, to man.
But the infallibility was at length established by Leo X., especially after Luther’s opposition, because they
despaired of defending their indulgences, bulls, &c., by any other method.

Imagination cannot form a scene more terrific than when these men were in the height of power, and to serve their
political purposes hurled the thunders of their excommunications over a kingdom. It was a national distress
not inferior to a plague or famine.

Philip Augustus, desirous of divorcing Ingelburg, to unite himself to Agnes de Meranie, the Pope put his kingdom
under an interdict. The churches were shut during the space of eight months; they said neither mass nor vespers; they
did not marry; and even the offspring of the married, born at this unhappy period, were considered as illicit:
and because the king would not sleep with his wife, it was not permitted to any of his subjects to sleep with theirs!
In that year France was threatened with an extinction of the ordinary generation. A man under this curse of public
penance was divested of all his functions, civil, military, and matrimonial; he was not allowed to dress his hair, to
shave, to bathe, nor even change his linen; so that upon the whole this made a filthy penitent. The good king Robert
incurred the censures of the church for having married his cousin. He was immediately abandoned. Two faithful domestics
alone remained with him, and these always passed through the fire whatever he touched. In a word, the horror which an
excommunication occasioned was such, that a courtesan, with whom one Peletier had passed some moments, having learnt
soon afterwards that he had been about six months an excommunicated person, fell into a panic, and with great
difficulty recovered from her convulsions.